After a silver halide photographic material is exposed to light, the silver halide photographic material is ordinarily subjected to color development treatment, during which a developing agent, such as an aromatic primary amine that has been oxidized with the silver halide, reacts with a dye forming coupler so that a color image is formed. Generally, in this process, the color reproduction method by the subtractive color process is often used and to reproduce blue, green and red colors, dye images that are complementary colors to them, namely yellow, magenta and cyan, are formed.
Many phenols and naphthols are used as cyan color image forming couplers. However, the shelf stability of the color images obtained from phenols and naphthols that are conventionally used still have some problems that remain unsolved. For example, color images obtained from 2-acylaminophenol cyan couplers described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531, 2,369,929, 2,423,730 and 2,801,171 are generally poor in heat fastness, color images obtained from 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,772,162 and 2,895,826 are generally poor in light fastness, and color images obtained from 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan couplers are generally poor in both light and heat (particularly moist heat) fastnesses.
Although 5-hydroxy-6-acylaminocarbostyril cyan couplers described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 104333/81 and 159861/85 (the term "OPI" as used herein means a "published unexamined Japanese patent applicaiton") and 4-hydroxy-5-acylaminohydroxyindol couplers, 4-hydroxy-5-acylamino-2,3-dihydro-1,3-benzimidazol-2-one couplers, etc. described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) No. 105229/83 which are included as condensed ring type cyan dye forming couplers are excellent in light and heat fastness, since their color development speed is not sufficient, their sensitivity is disadvantageously low and their maximum color development density (hereinafter referred to as D.sub.max) is somewhat low. More recently, in view of the need to reduce the risk of harm to public health due to disposal of used developer containing benzyl alcohol, there is a movement to use color developers and treating liquids which do not contain benzyl alcohol. A problem which is not restricted to cyan dye forming couplers is that when couplers are processed with a color developer without benzyl alcohol, sensitivity and D.sub.max are reduced. This problem is observed with yellow dye forming couplers and magenta dye forming couplers as well as cyan dye forming couplers, but is particularly noticeable in the case of condensed ring type cyan dye forming couplers (hereinafter referred to as cyan couplers).
Even though various color development accelerators (e.g., compounds described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,950,970, 2,515,147, 2,496,903, 2,304,925, 4,038,075 and 4,119,462, British Pat. Nos. 1,430,998 and 1,455,413, Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 15831/78, 62450/80, 62451/80, 62452/80, 62453/80, 50536/83, and 162256/85 and Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 12422/76 and 49728/80) have been additionally used to attempt to solve this problem, sufficient color density has not yet been attained.
Even if built-in color developing agents (e.g., as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,719,492, 3,342,559 and 3,342,597, and Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 6235/81, 16133/81, 97531/82 and 83565/82) are used, color development becomes disadvantageously slow or fogging occurs, which means that the prior art methods using the built-in color developing agents are not suitable.